Happy New Years!

As this year closes, I have to say that I am, on the whole, feeling extremely positive about the coming year :-) So many good things have started this year, most particularly in our move toward a more sustainable lifestyle, and it's nice to have a list of resolutions that will not only benefit myself and my family, but also my community and future generations for a change. Happy new year to you all, may you all have a happy and healthy 2007 :-)

Staying Put

OK, I just had to check my other regular blogs before I took a sustainability break, lol, and today's entry in Casaubon's Book about "Staying Put" really resonates with me. I know I've said before that although I want to move to my "dream house" on my "dream acreage", I am (reluctantly) resigned to staying where we are. It makes me feel so much better to know that there are many other people out there, like Sharon, who feel the same way, but are determined to make the best of it :-)

Ahhh, 'tis the season to be restful...

I've been having a nice week "off" :-) Apart from a tiny amount of Christmas shopping, done at 9pm on Wednesday night in a very quiet Target store (where I ran into a couple of friends and had a nice chat, lol), I have done very little in the last week! All the functions apart from a very relaxed work one this afternoon, seemed to have finished last week, so this week has been a time of cups of tea and the reading of a Terry Pratchett novel I bought about 9 months ago. Just the thing for a transition into the post-Xmas lay-about-eating-leftovers-and-watching-the-cricket festival :-)

As such, I have been deliberately avoiding researching anything regarding sustainability! I will start again in the new year, but for now this sloooowing down is as much about re-evaluating our lifestyle and appreciating what we have, which is definitely just as important as saving water and buying energy-efficient appliances.

I have also received this morning my last shipment of books for a while, and boy they should keep me going! Two books on organic gardening (Easy Organic Gardening and Moon Planting by Lyn Bagnall, and Organic Gardening in Australia), Lawns Into Lunch by Jill Finnane (a collection of 22 stories of people "who discovered how to grow food in the city"), Your Money or Your Life (written by former financial advisers, and now advocates of a frugal, sustainable lifestyle) and Slow Food Revolution: A New Culture for Eating and Living by Petrini and Padovani (the orginators of the Slow Food movement).

So this year I have just the one New Year's Resolution: to slow down. Could be hard with three littlies, LOL, but I'm sure it will be them that will gain the most benefit from it :-)

And if I don't make it back online before the new year, Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year to everyone!

Finances vs. ethics

I'm seriously having a couple of "those" days where it's really hard for me to pick between what I (ethically) want to do and what my hip-pocket is dictating! DH's car is having problems and the news came back yesterday that: a) it requires an obscure part that no one has ever ordered before (and you KNOW that means it's going to be expensive) and b) if and when they can get it in, it's going to require the whole engine to be pulled apart to replace it ( i.e. you KNOW that's going to be even more EXPENSIVE)... *Sigh* So there goes the new fridge :-( And here comes even more belt-tightening for things like the weekly groceries.

And that's where a lot of my financial vs. ethics problems are arising - for example, I *want* to buy locally produced organic goods, but where organic bananas are $14 a kilo at the moment, Coles just had a shipment in of regular bananas for $5.49 a kilo. The obvious option is to not buy any bananas of course, but when you have a very fussy three year old who will only eat a couple of types of fruit, and bananas are one of them, well... you buy her bananas. The list of similar things, food and otherwise, goes on, but you get the picture.

In another area, I have looked into changing our superannuation funds to Australian Ethical Investments. The prospectus makes for interesting reading... but when I got to the filling out the changeover forms bit, the "attach large cheque here" section really put me off. Not only because it's money we just don't have at the moment, but because it's difficult (for me) to calculate the amount I would need to pay them and thirdly, because I would have to get a bank cheque to pay it (entailing queuing with three little kids, an $8 per cheque fee, and a separate cheque for each of us). So, particularly in light of the huge water bill we received yesterday, I am feeling a little bummed right now!

They don't call this the Silly Season for nothing. I am sorely tempted to just batten down the hatches until after the new year - wait until after the Festivus presents have been delivered and the dead animals have been roasted and served with vegetables shipped in from other continents - before I do anything more, sustainability-wise! No reading scary books about Peak oil, no magazine articles about the oppression of coffee farmers in Africa, no excessive worrying about bills. Just slow time with family, some gardening, reading some (shock! horror!) amusing fiction and fantasy novels I've had sitting on my shelves for months. Some recharge-the-batteries time. Hmmm... sounding nicer by the minute!

Water bill

Coincidentally, after reading the water meter yesterday, the latest quarterly water bill arrived today... and it isn't good news :-( Our bill is up by $23 on the last quarter, and our average daily usage was 0.76 kL, up from 0.67 kL last quarter, and 0.74 kL this time last year. The average for the whole billing area this time last year was 0.59 kL :-(

I actually feel a little sick in the stomach about it - here I am thinking that whilst we aren't water "nazis", we try to conserve water where we can. Clearly, we are wasting much more than I thought. Granted, we have family of five, which I believe is above average for the area, and we have a large proportion of our backyard taken up with garden, unlike almost everyone in our neighbourhood. Still, I'm quite disappointed that we have so far to go to get down below average. Nothing like a bit of a proverbial kick up the backside though to get one motivated though I suppose!

Water use so far this month

I've just read the meter again, and it's up 7 kL on the last reading at the beginning of the month. That's around 500L usage a day this month, in comparison to around 839L a day last month. Admittedly, we haven't watered the garden as yet this month as we've had a couple of showers of rain - not much (3-4mm each), but enough to stop me from dragging out the sprinkler for another few days. I have been watering the veggies though, so that's been consistent with last month. Plus we had a couple of visitors for a couple of days at the begining of this month to add to the water use. So all in all, we are going better than last month - so far! We shall see what the rest of the month holds, weather-wise, but I'll keep trying to cut down our water use where I can, particularly in light of the fact that the largest contributor to our footprint is our water use.

Too much stuff!

I'm trying to get rid of some of the vast swathes of baby stuff we have around the house, and given our current financial situation, it seems much more prudent to try and sell it rather than give it away, as lovely (and less time-consuming) as that would be. I'm not having much success however! I've gotten rid of anything that can be posted, but it's all the great big, in-your-face stuff that's clagging up my bedroom now: baths, basinettes, rockers, prams... *Sigh* I think the universe is trying to tell me something about the spirit of giving at Christmas, LOL.

Whilst the primary impetous for getting rid of this stuff is to create some more space in our smallish home, and some of it is the desire to generate some money to help with the bills, a small percentage of it has come from the fact that our annual contents insurance bill has arrived. I haven't paid too much attention to it in the past, but this year, in light of the changes in my/our mindset, the insurance value figure of $136,000 (give or take a few thou') really hit me in the eye. That's the replacement value of everything (i.e. the cost to buy it all new again), not the actual value, but it staggers me to think how much we've spent on stuff over the years. Some of it essential (the bed, fridge and washing machine spring to mind!), but much of it not...

Owning and maintaining all of that stuff takes a lot of energy I think, energy that I'd rather devote elsewhere! All of that is coming to a head at this time of year too, the season of accumulation it seems, LOL. With three little kids, I particularly notice the volume of stuff that they are given, and that I then have to find something to do with! Fortunately this year, my side of the family have all chipped in together to buy one present that is to be shared amongst all three kids - a great option, I think. It's useful, it's small and it cuts down the volume of stuff substantially.

I have given away and am trying to sell, all of the baby toys we have - little A just plays with her older sisters' things anyway - and in future years I have decided that we will have a clear-out of the toys prior to Christmas and donate anything decent to charity. I definitely like the "one-thing-in-one-thing-out" philosophy, which I have been using for my overflowing book collection for a couple of years to keep things just a little in check, LOL. Now however, I think it is time to apply that philosphy to the rest of the house - that is of course, after I have decluttered and culled! It's quite ironic that I keep putting off decluttering and getting rid of stuff because it always seems so time-consuming, whereas the reality is I always feel rather rejuvinated and free-ed afterwards.

Car Tyres Part 2

So after a bit of research I've decided which tyres to get for my car: Bridgestone RE92's. Why? Because:

* The Bridgestone company has ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems certification;
* The tyres came third in a CHOICE magazine test in 2002;
* They are reasonably priced (not the cheapest but not far off, and nowhere near the most expensive); and
* They come in a size that fits my car ;-)

Now I need to ring the local dealership/s and ask what they are doing with the used tyres!

Incidentally, I would normally very much agree with alfski's comment on my last post about it being better to reuse products before recycling them, however in the case of car tyres, I personally worry about using them around them home, given the amount of toxic substances that are in them. Many people I know use old tyres for gardening in or for retaining walls, but the main concern with tyres going into landfill is the potential for toxic leachates... so, personally, the concept of growing my food in them is right up there with using arsenic-treated pine logs as edging for garden beds, ie, not for me thanks! Treated pine has been used for many years for kids play equipment and studies have shown that toxic substances leach to the surface over time and rub off on the kids' hands, leading to the recent banning of treated pine around the home. I believe used tyres have the same potential. Other sites that have used tyres, such as the formation of artificial reefs, are starting to show that toxic leachates are damaging the sealife, for example this article. Nasty stuff all around, really.

Environmentally-friendly car tyres?

Essentially, there is no such thing! I've been doing some research, in light of the fact that I need four new tyres on my car, and tyres are pretty much bad news from go to woah, lol. Having said that, I'm not in a position to ditch my car just yet, so I have to get tyres - but what to get?

Apparently, around 18 million tyres are year are disposed of in Australia, with about 20 million stockpiled, and of that about 1.5 million are used for energy in cement kilns - pretty much the rest end up in landfill or illegal dumps :-( Some tyre companies like Goodyear, offer, via a "voluntary levy", the option of disposing of your used tyres in an "environmentally sensible" manner. Presumably that means they are used for recycled rubber products? Frankly, I think all companies should be doing that, regardless.

Tyres are made from rubber (natural or synthetic), carbon black, nylon or polyester cord, sulphur, oils and resins, and chemicals. The majority of these ingredients are petroleum-based (yet another thing to worry about post-Peak Oil). Once they have been "vulcanised" to form the tyre, it is really difficult to economically extract the raw materials from used tyres. However, one Australian company, Molectra Technologies, has recently developed a process that is able to reclaim "all of the components that make up a tyre cleanly and efficiently ([with] 100% recovery). There is no waste, residue or emissions", which is pretty exciting. They also claim to have low operating costs and a very energy-efficient process. They are currently only operating a small plant in Queensland, but have plans to construct and commission several full-scale resource recovery plants around Australia, and that has to be a better thing than landfill or combustion (which produces toxic gases). I guess that's something important to ask your tyre place next time you buying tyres - where the used tyres are going.

Regardless, extending the life of your tyres is pretty important. The best way is to make sure that you maintain the correct tyre pressure at all times, because under- or over-inflated tyres increase the rolling resistance, making the engine work harder. This not only prolongs the life of the tyre but also ensures that less fuel is required, so you are saving gas emissions also. For the same reason, ensuring the wheels are balanced and aligned properly, ensuring you aren't carrying excess baggage around in your boot, and keeping your tyres clean (mud or soil can cause the sidewall compounds to deteriorate, and rocks stuck in the tread can cause the grooves to crack) also helps. I've also noticed that several companies are promoting particular tyres as "green", so I had a closer look. It seems that it is also related to rolling resistance - they apparently have the lowest rolling resistance of their particular brand, therefore saving you money and extending the life of the tyre.

An alternative to whole new tyre is a retread. Retreads reuse the casing of the original tyre with a new tread put on, so oviously they are saving resources. Goodyear says it's waste rubber from retreading is recycled into rubber powders by Encore Rubber Technologies in Victoria. The information I have found suggests that retreads are suitable for low speed, low stress driving but are not recommended for continuous highway motoring. My car is mostly used for travel around town (as opposed to DH who does a lot of highway driving), but we often drive to the in-laws on a highway, about half an hour each way, and down the freeway to Sydney and back perhaps once a month. Obviously not "continuous highway motoring", but considering that I usually have three littlies in the car with me, I have to say that I am a little worried about possible tyre failure at high speed? How much of that fear is related to bad press and how much is justified, I'm not really sure? Unfortunately it also appears that a retread costs essentially the same as a new tyre to buy, so most people will chose the new one over the recycled one.

So that doesn't leave much choice, but brand new ones. According to an Australian Commonwealth Department of Environment article, the production of tyres consumes not only the raw materials I listed above, but also: fuels for energy used in the production process; land and habitat for the production of natural rubber (if used); iron ore in the production of steel for the tyre cord; zinc; and other minerals and organic substances for protecting and alloying the steel and processing the rubber. However, they then go on to say that in the overall materials and energy flow involved in transport in general, the tyres contribute a very small proportion, and that "even complete recovery of the resources in tyres would have little impact on the overall resource flows associated with transport. Conversely, any change in the transport system such as reduction in the distance travelled would reduce factors such as fuel consumption as well as result in a proportional reduction in waste tyre generation."

So I guess the best option is to chose retreads if you can, or otherwise the best quality tyre you can afford that is suitable for your car and what it's use. And make sure you ask where your old ones are going!

A more environmentally-friendly Christmas

Although I've had a number of ideas, I've been looking out for more thoughts on how to be more environmentally conscious this Christmas. The Healthy Habitat site has a few suggestions, and ACF produced a report last year on The Hidden Cost of Christmas spending (scary reading!), which also has a few suggestions at the end. Or try the Eco Voice online, or here, or here, or here!!

I've done a few things such as:
* Any present requiring wrapping is going into a reusable bag or box rather than using wrapping paper that will be discarded;
* Many presents are food or money, to avoid "useless gift" syndrome;
* As I've mentioned in previous posts, I've bought many presents from Oxfam Unwrapped, and of course they don't require wrapping;
* My cards are printed on recycled paper;
* I will recycle all cards received via Planet Ark recycling bins after Xmas.

There's a lot more we can do, athough it will be more difficult being at other people's homes for both Christmas and Boxing Day, and therefore not being in charge of the food, recycling of empty containers and packaging etc! In addition, Christmas Day is going to be a hot meat-filled extravaganza at the in-laws, served with the air-conditioner pumping hard to cool the effects of the oven going full-bore and the hot food, *sigh*! And I'm afraid any suggestions I've made regarding salads in the past have been met with stoney-faced resistence, LOL. Ah well, it's my turn for hosting next year, so I intend to make it an easy-going veggo affair :-)

Goals for 2007

Well, this is my to-do list for next year! I might not achieve everything and no doubt I will add more to the list as the year progresses, but it's a start :-)

Garden:
* Finish new veggie garden, including edging and path;
* Establish a worm farm (which I am getting for Xmas);
* Replace the Robinia with one of my fruit trees;
* Replace the Murraya on the retaining wall with a fruit tree;
* Try a mushroom kit (which I am also getting for Xmas);
* Use the laundry rinse water on the garden ornamentals;
* Plant out my small, unused water bowl with watercress and water chesnuts;
* Plant fruit vine/s along the back fence (passionfruit? kiwi?);
* Set up weeping hoses to irrigate the fruit trees and the murraya hedge at the rear of the house;
* Build shadehouse for bromeliads with area for propogation and possible sales;
* Put some savings away for a rainwater tank in 2008.


House:
* Use up the remaining cleaning chemicals I have and do not replace them;
* Reduce water, electricity and gas use as much as possible;
* Use a bucket in the kids shower;
* Install skylight (solatube) in the kitchen;
* Continue to declutter;
* Replace current refrigerator with a new more energy-efficient model;
* Continue to reduce the amount of packaging on products we purchase;
* Get over my addiction to Glad Wrap.

Personal:
* Use up the stockpile of commercial shampoo and conditioner I have and replace them with homemade products;
* Make my own facial cleanser;
* Look for SLS-free kids shampoo;
* Look at alternatives for commercial toothpaste;
* Look for money-making opportunities working from home;
* Join the local library for the kids and buy less books for them;
* Read You Money Or Your Life;
* Continue reading other relevant books;
* Discontinue my magazine subscriptions except the gardening ones;

Cars:
* Trade-in Daewoo for deisel Peugeot 307 if finances permit;
* Continue to try and reduce the kilometres we are doing;
* Have both cars serviced and tuned;
* Start checking the tyre pressure regularly;
* Stop my bad habit of continuing to add petrol after the first 'click';
* Investigate the best alternatives in new tyres for my car (it needs four new ones).

Food:
* Try to have a cooking day once a week to stock up on more food in the freezer to circumvent snacking and takeaway food;
* Try to get to the local farmers market to buy bulk fruit to dry in the dehydrator for snacks;
* Experiment with the dehydrator - stop buying kids snacks in favour of homemade;
* Limit takeaway and processed foods as much as possible (more than we are now);
* Replace more diary products in our diet including substituting eggs in baking with No Egg substitute;
* Reduce our meat intake even more (I'd like us to be vegetarian when at home, but might need to be more flexible at family and friends' houses).

Reflections on 2006

OK, so it's not the end of the year just yet, but ALS has a similar thread running at the moment so for my own clarity of thought, I thought I would compile a list of what I have done so far, and tomorrow, my sustainability aims for 2007.

I have had a compost bin ever since I rented my first unit with a courtyard, even though I had no garden to speak of, LOL, and I grew up with parents with a compost bin so it is second nature to me to empty my food scraps into a bucket under the sink (which then goes into the compost bin later on). I also grew up (from the age of 15 anyway) with rainwater tanks as our only water supply, so it also second nature to me not to waste water, although I have certainly been guilty of long, hot, soaking showers in the past! I get agitated however, when I see or hear a tap running for any longer than a few seconds! I could never have one of those garden ponds that have a tap as a spout running water all day, LOL, it would drive me nuts! We have also been using calico bags, and now Green bags, for our grocery shopping for a few years.

When we built our home we knew enough to buy a block of land with a northerly aspect, and chose a project home that has all the living areas on the northern side of the house, with the bedrooms and bathrooms etc on the eastern and shaded southern side. We also had already installed ceiling fans in the sunroom (now the kids playroom) and the main bedroom. The reverse-cycle ducted air conditioning we had installed doesn't have an energy efficiency label as such, but the energyrating.gov.au website gives it's running costs as $2733 for 10 years. I don't really know if that's good or not? The other air conditioners with the same energy output on the list had higher running costs (up to $3510), so I guess it is one of the best for it's size. We were also already using one of Origin Energy's GreenPower schemes for our electricity supply. Unfortunately there are currently no GreenPower natural gas suppliers in NSW (that I can find anyway), so we are going to have to wait for that. I have put my name on Origin Energy's wait-list so that I will be notified if and (hopefully) when it does become available here.

The new things that we have done in the past couple of months I have listed in a previous post, but I will list them all here again for my own benefit, as I do like lists, LOL.

House:
* Installed window tinting on the windows in the lounge room and dining room;
* Installed ceiling fans in the kids bedrooms and in the kitchen area;
* Installed low-flow AAA rated shower heads;
* Installed a flow-limiter on the kitchen tap;
* Put shower timers in each of the showers;
* Use a bucket in the ensuite shower to catch the wasterd water while it is warming up;
* Bought a battery charger and are slowly replacing normal batteries with rechargeable ones, particularly in all the kids toys;
* Switched to environmentally-friendly laundry detergent and dishwasher powder, and replaced the dishwasher Rinse Aid with vinegar;
* Unplugged and gave away our very old, inefficient bar fridge;
* Reduced use of clothes dryer as much as possible.

Personal:
* Bought toothbrushes with replaceable heads made from recycled plastic;
* Switched to SLS-free facial wash and ditched the toner for Witch Hazel;
* Bought a Diva cup for myself;
* Have read several appropriate books and have numerous books to read on subjects ranging from Peak Oil to Slow Food and organic gardening.

Cars:
* Offset the carbon emissions from our two cars via Greenfleet;
* I'm trying to conscientiously limit the amount of driving I do, and try to drive as economically as possible.

Food:
* Started buying organic fruit and vegetables, locally grown where possible;
* Started buying other organic products where possible and we can afford it, particularly milk, cereals, meat, beans and tinned produce;
* We have cut out a large proportion of the meat in our diet, we now eat meat less than once a week;
* We have cut down on the amount of dairy products we are consuming, substituting many with soy products;
* We have eliminated many processed foods from our diet and have cut down significantly on the amount of fast food takeaway we eat;
* I am making my own yoghurt;
* We have reduced the number of frozen products we buy;
* I have planted some vegetables and am in the process of developing a much larger veggie garden to grow my own organic veggies:
* I have bought several fruit trees which I will also grow organically.

Well, it's a start :-) Now I have to do a list of the things I want to do next year!

Water use for November

Well I read the water meter on the first of the month, and then again on the first of this month, to get some sort of idea about how much water we are using over an average month. I was utterly appalled to discover that we used 26KL of water during November :-O That's 26,000L of water, around 6500L a week, or 839L a day :-O That's disgusting! We had some hot weather and I've been watering the veggies almost daily when it's been really hot. I used the hose too rather than bucketing shower water or greywater, as I want to see what sort of difference that will make this month... but boy, is that embarrassing.

I tried to look up the average suburban water use to compare it; I think it must be around 1200-1600L per person per week, which would make us, at 1300L each, pretty average BUT that's for two adults and three little kids, and surely five adults would use much more water... so if I divide it by 4 to compensate that makes it 1625L each per week :-(

So, we have our work cut out for us, that's for sure. I have been perusing the Your Home Technical Manual at the greenhouse.gov.au website, to try and get some more ideas, but there really isn't much more than we are already doing indoors, to conserve water. So it must be mostly in the garden and the new veggies and fruit trees? So that will be this month's challenge, trying to really work on conserving more water in the garden, and in addition I will be bucketing my rinse water from the washing machine around the garden (although probably not on my veggies). It will be interesting to see what kind of difference this will make?